The Caribbean’s food scene continues to get better, with a renewed focus on honoring local styles and ingredients and a growing slate of world-class restaurants. And 2016 was an eventful year for the region’s restaurants, with several stellar debuts like St. Croix’s Balter but also the sad closing in December of one of the Caribbean’s greatest restaurants, La Cave a Vins in Martinique (although the owners are reportedly moving to a new location on the outskirts of Fort-de-France.)

With our fourth annual 50 Best Caribbean Restaurants list, we again seek to highlight the diversity and quality of the world of Caribbean food, using our three pillars of evaluation: food, service and ambience. Because as we like to say, the most important thing about a restaurant is how it makes you feel. And the best restaurants tick all three boxes.

Here are this year’s 50 best restaurants in the Caribbean.

Le Pressoir

Chef Franck Mear has achieved a masterwork with Le Pressoir, a truly exceptional restaurant set in an old Creole house in the heart of Grand Case, St. Martin. It boasts impeccable service, wonderful Brittany-meets-the-French-Caribbean cuisine and a kind of rarefied but relaxed ambience that makes for an instantly memorable meal. It is, in many ways, the perfect Caribbean restaurant.